Austin mayor to push ban on single-use plastic bag

Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell and two other council members will introduce a resolution at the next council meeting Aug. 4 calling for the “phase-out of single use plastic check-out bags” in the city.

The bags “cost Austin taxpayers a significant amount of money,” Leffingwell wrote. “In fact, Austinites use about 263 million plastic bags annually, costing the city about $850,000 per year for collection, litter clean-up, landfill management and recycling contamination. This figure does not include the cost to our environment.”

Makes you wonder what impact single-use plastic bags have on the meager City of Dallas budget. Dallas needs to join such cities as San Francisco; Portland, Ore.; and Washington, D.C., in outlawing these things. Hey, aren’t we supposed to be this super-duper “Green City” or is that, like so much else, just a lot of talk?

Leffingwell said Austin engaged in an 18-month voluntary “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” campaign with Whole Foods, Target, Walmart, Walgreens and Randalls (Tom Thumb to those of us here) hoping to achieve a 50 percent reduction of plastic bags sent to the landfill. The campaign resulted in only a 20 percent reduction, however, and that simply wasn’t good enough for Leffingwell. Hence his push for an out-right ban.

“Our resolution calls on the City Manager to conduct a stakeholder process and develop an ordinance to bring back to Council this November,” Leffingwell wrote. “Concerned citizens and affected businesses will have a chance to help shape the timeline of a phase-out and determine if any exceptions should be made for certain types of businesses or situations.”

Anyone listening on the Dallas City Council?